The $25 tax on every gun purchased in the county — city law prohibits gun sales in Chicago — is meant to offset health care and other costs of gun violence, Board President Toni Preckwinkle said.

“Gun violence is a real problem for us,” she said. “It’s a problem for us in our criminal justice system and it’s a problem for us in our health care system, and I make no apologies for the proposal.”

Preckwinkle said the average shooting victim cost taxpayers $52,000 in acute care because nearly 70 percent of the victims don’t have health insurance, NBCChicago.com reported.

The vote follows a violent Chicago summer, when some weekends left multiple people killed and dozens of others injured in shootings, NBCChicago.com reported. The city’s murder rate is up 25 percent for the year, and the Cook County Jail is near capacity with 9,000-plus inmates.

The National Rifle Association ahead of the vote said the “misguided and burdensome” gun tax “continues to penalize law-abiding gun owners for exercising their fundamental right to keep and bear arms.”

The gun tax, which takes effect April 1, was passed as part of Cook County’s $2.9 billion spending plan for 2013.

As part of the budget, commissioners also approved a $1 tax increase on each pack of cigarettes, making the county’s $6.67-a-pack tax the second-most expensive in the country, behind New York at $6.86, NBCChicago.com reported. The new tax will push the price of a pack to more than $10 when it goes into effect March 1.

A gambling tax increase that commissioners also approved will impose $1,000 annually on slot machines in the county and $200 on video gambling machines. Rivers Casino in Des Plaines would be affected as well as establishments that approved video gaming.

JPFO offers the following counter proposal.

We at JPFO have a novel counter-proposal. Rather than taxing the law-abiding citizens of Chicago who purchase their firearms legally, let’s impose a crime tax. A criminal who uses a gun in the commission of a crime is subject to a $25,000 fine. A criminal who shoots someone in commission of a crime is subject to a $50,000 fine in addition to being personally responsible for medical expenses. And a criminal who can’t afford to pay the fine works in prison until he works off his debt, including the costs of incarceration.

We at JPFO are not criminologists, so we don’t know if such fines will deter crime or not. But we know for sure that they won’t penalize the law-abiding citizens of Chicago for exercising their G-d-given right to defensive arms. These fines are of course in addition to existing criminal penalties and civil liabilities.

Yours in Freedom, The Liberty Crew at JPFO
Protecting you by creating solutions to destroy “gun control”